Henry Marcum found not guilty

RICHARD PRIORrichard.prior@staugustinerecord.com

Published Friday, August 19, 2005

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DEFENSE ATTORNEY Refik Eler places his hand on client Henry Ked Marcum's arm as Marcum wipes his eyes Thursday following a verdict of not guilty on three counts of child abuse. By MADELYN TROYANEK, madelyn.troyanek@ staugustinerecord.com

After nearly seven hours of deliberation Thursday, a six-man jury declared a Fruit Cove man was not guilty of abusing his three stepchildren.

Henry Ked Marcum, 42, dropped his head on the defense table and started crying when the verdict was announced around 11:30 last night.

Marcum had been charged with three counts of child abuse for beating his 12-, 10- and 7-year-old stepsons.

Before the trial started, Circuit Judge J. Michael Traynor severed a fourth count from the others.

It charges Marcum with abusing his eldest stepson, Luke Austin "L.A." Thise, who was 13 years old when he hanged himself from his bunk bed on April 7, 2004.

click photo to enlarge

DEFENSE ATTORNEY Refik Eler places his hand on client Henry Ked Marcum's arm as Marcum wipes his eyes Thursday following a verdict of not guilty on three counts of child abuse. By MADELYN TROYANEK, madelyn.troyanek@ staugustinerecord.com

Prosecutors indicated Thursday night that they would go ahead with the second trial.

Jeannie Marcum, Marcum's wife and mother of the four boys, has been charged as a principal to child abuse. According to authorities, she knew about the abuse and condoned it.

She and her husband remain free on bond.

Defense attorney Refik W. Eler put 10 witnesses on the stand yesterday to insist that Marcum had been a loving, attentive parent.

"The kids appeared happy to me," said Phil Jansen, who met Marcum five years ago and regularly played golf with him. "Where Hank went, they went."

Another friend, Pat Brooks, attended the Marcums' wedding in October 2003. The defendant's stepsons, who took part in the ceremony, "were all excited," she said.

Marcum's mother, Grethel Harris, came from her home in Kentucky to attend the trial, which began with jury selection on Monday.

She testified Thursday that she first met Jeannie Marcum two years ago on Mother's Day.

During that visit, she said, her son "would put the little one on his lap, feeding him popcorn. They called him Papa Beanstalk."

John Morgan III, Jeannie Marcum's older brother, said the children always appeared to be "very happy."

The most emotional time at the couple's wedding, he said, came when Marcum "broke down and cried because he was so happy."

"None of the kids broke down and cried because they were so sad?" Eler asked, with fake disbelief.

"No."

In her closing statement, Assistant State Attorney Cheryl McCray showed the jurors that may not have been entirely true.

With perhaps 15 minutes to go in her statement, she projected a photo from the wedding on the courtroom wall. The 12-year-old appeared to be extremely uncomfortable as he tried to pull away from his new stepfather.

McCray left that oversized picture on the wall until she finished her closing.

That wedding day, she said, was when the boys' lives took a drastic change for the worse. It was, she said, the day when "things started to get ugly."

In her forceful closing statement, McCray recalled that the 10-year-old stepson had testified Marcum was "nice and mean."

"First, he was nice," she recalled the boy saying. "Then he was mean."

Such a change is common with new couples, she said. At first, people are determined to put on "the nicest face" they can.

"But," she added, "as time goes by it gets a little harder to keep that faade going."

Marcum's stepsons lost their father to cancer in May 2001, McCray reminded the jury. They were still in a "vulnerable, emotional state," she said.

"Instead of getting comfort," she continued, "they got beat."

Even when he wasn't around the house, Marcum left behind a conspicuous sign of his dominance, said McCray.

It was a leather belt, draped over a doorknob, "a reminder that, even when he was not around, he was in control," she said.

Telling the jurors that their verdict would have "significant ramifications," Eler insisted, "Everything you heard (about alleged abuse) can be taken out of context."

Equally emotional and animated in his closing, Eler said the jurors had heard no testimony that the children were ever seen with "bruises, cuts, welts or marks."

"There was no injury," he said. "There was no physical abuse."

Nor could the state prove there had been "mental injury," as the state had charged, Eler insisted. The psychiatrists called by both sides couldn't even agree on how to gauge "emotional abuse," said Eler.

"If they -- the brain trust of child-raising -- can't agree, how are you guys supposed to agree?" Eler asked the jury.